DISQUS

Mark Trapp · 1 year ago

Louis, I think your explanation of the outrage about this ad ignores the actual content of the ad. The text of the ad is as follows:

"Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion. I mean, in theory it's a great idea: there's the front baby carrier, the sling, the shwing, the wrap, the pouch, and who knows what else they've come up with? Wear the baby on your side, your front, go hands free! Supposedly, it's a real bonding experience: they say that babies carried close to the bod tend to cry less than others, but what about me? Do moms that carry their babies cry more than those that don't? I sure do: these things put a ton of strain on your back, your neck, your shoulders... did I mention your back? I mean, I'll put up with the pain because it's a good kind of pain: it's for my kid, plus it totally makes me look like an official mom. And so, if I look tired and crazy, people will understand why. Motrin. We feel your pain."

The narrative is of one mom, who agrees in principle the ultimate value of babycarrying, but also notes the pain of the act. One can either relate to the mom, or not. It never implies that babycarrying is evil, or that people who do babycarry are idiots: in fact, it goes out of its way to clarify the fashion statement and the pain statement, making sure the listener knows that the mom thinks babycarrying has value and that the pain is not unbearable. The ad keeps trying to explain itself, which makes it clumsy, but it's hardly the slap in the face you've made it out to be.

Louis Gray · 1 year ago

Mark, it all depends on perspective. Where I had issues with the ad,
were on the comments like "seems to be", "in theory" and "makes me
look like an official mom".

The tone was dismissive of an activity many people use to make their
lives easier. I understand your point, of course, but if I were
managing this campaign, which thank goodness, I am not, I would have
called for rewrite.

Mark Trapp · 1 year ago

Louis, I took "supposedly," "in fashion," "in theory," and "totally makes me look like an official mom" as attempting to be colloquial; other words like "bod" and "totally" and the "did I mention your back?" play to that. I can see this having played well in test audiences: take a different topic, and it reads as if she's trying to explain something to a friend.

But there's really two issues here: the execution of the ad and the handling of the response to the ad. They're separate, and one isn't explained by the other. If the internet erupted over someone creating an ad that merely stated "puppies are soft," the appropriate reaction would've been the same.

Mark Trapp · 1 year ago

I guess what I'm getting at is: what about the execution of the ad illustrates the point about using tools to monitor your brand? It seems like there's supposed to be some connection between the obvious inflammatory nature of the ad and how obvious it was that they should've been monitoring this specific ad. That is: ad campaigns are big things. It's incredibly difficult to measure them in real time, and most of the time, it's a wasted effort to do so. One obviously monitors the results from a campaign, but each individual buy is part of a larger picture. Assuming that it wasn't obvious that this was going to be a really bad ad, as I don't think it's productive to discussion to assume companies are incompetent, there was no way to know that this ad needed to be watched like a hawk.

I know the point you're trying to make is that all the ads a company does should be watched all the time: but that isn't the reality of advertising nor is it reasonable. We were talking about this on FriendFeed, but the web needs advertising. If you're going to give them an impossible set of hurdles to jump over, their time and money are better spent elsewhere.

ontarioemperor · 1 year ago

However, a well-meaning ad that is poorly executed can do as much damage as an ad that is intentionally dismissive. After all, it's not the ad agency that decides how customers perceive the ad, but the customers themselves.

One repeated refrain in the anti-Motrin tweets is the belief that Motrin must not have consulted any real moms when they developed the ad; that perception (even if not true) may be more damaging than any "official mom" language in the ad itself.

christiananderson · 1 year ago

Great post Louis.brand management is a 24/7 job. Bankers hours won't get it done.

Nick Savides · 1 year ago

Hey Louis,
Thanks for elaborating on the Motrin moms story and for providing those links. I hadn't seen TweetBeep before, but it looks useful.

Louis Gray · 1 year ago

Nick, appreciate your comments. Ever since I found TweetBeep, I've
relied on it. It's a step behind the live search (Summize), but it
comes in handy if you're not constantly checking, especially for more
generic keywords.

I wrote about TweetBeep in more detail last September: http://louisgray.com/live/2008/09/tweetbeep-twi...

Mitch · 1 year ago

"They need to understand that your brand is at the mercy of its constituents."

That's one way of looking at it. Fire stuff out the marketing end and see what works. Is that the best way of looking at it though Louis? Maybe I'm missing your point here but I think the best advice is to be proactive and anticipate reactions like these. Instead of giving your constituents something to be merciful or merciless with, why not just do your best to keep your branding message straightforward and considerate?

P.S. They, your, and its all in one sentence? I know some people who might be upset with that composition.

MayankDhingra · 1 year ago

I've been using Google alerts, along with Twitter and FriendFeed search to track what's being said about kwippy. Recent additions to the arsenal are our own IM bot which now supports track for twitter
(http://tr.im/14y2), so I don't need to now check out twitter search per se and backtype(thanks to this post)

Also, instead of setting up different Google alerts for news and blogs the comprehensive mode can be used to track news, blogs and web all in one.

CraigK · 1 year ago

Thanks for the tips. I've been manually trying to search strictly through Google and have been wasting time. I am new to Twitter so the Twitter search will be very helpful as long with the backtype alerts to get automatic alerts. this is probably the most important step in engaging with customers because if you don't know specifically where or who is mentioning your product or service, you will never be able to engage.

Craig
www.budgetpulse.com

Jessica Gottlieb · 1 year ago

A quick google alert could have fixed it too because every blog post referenced twitter.

My advice? Motrin should pick up 25,000 baby slings, slap their logo on it and do a big giveaway.

Own it.

MayankDhingra · 1 year ago

Here's a blog post I just wrote building upon your list of tools http://tr.im/1608 .

Thanks !!